Back Home: Day 19

August 22,2011

Asia's largest girls school is only a couple of kilometers away from home. The Cotton Hill Government Higher Secondary School has over 5000 girls enrolled. Out of the 160 teachers and 12 non-teaching staff, only 3 are men. It celebrated its platinum jubilee last year. A fully air conditioned, computerized library was opened today as part of the celebrations. With the reliability of power supply in the city, I hope the library has enough windows that can be opened during the day when the air conditioning stops working. 

Was reading about Cheriyanujan Raja connected to the Kozhikode Samoothiri (Calicut Zamorin in English) family. He was nicknamed coat-wearing raja and cyclist raja because he was the first bicycle owner in Kozhikode and never stepped out of the palace without a coat and tie. People would stand on either side of the street to watch him bicycle to the court every morning. 

Once when an older woman of the royal family fell ill and it was difficult for the other royal women to take care of her, the raja employed the services a Nedungadi woman (lower caste than royals). This caused an uproar in the family. The prevailing view was that it is better to stay sick and die rather than be looked after by a lower caste caretaker. Hearing this the raja said that he would go one step further and drink water from a Nair's hand. Nair caste is even lower than the Nedungadis. He asked Raman Nair, a palace worker, to bring him some water and drank it. Samoothiri, the raja's uncle, went ape shit hearing about this travesty and summoned the raja. Raja drank water served by Raman Nair in front of the Samoothiri also. This was 1894. 

After this incident the raja got another title: "Vellamkudi raja" (water-drinking raja). Such revolutionary actions were not tolerated in caste-crazy conservative Kerala society at that time. This is the Kerala that Vivekananda called a mental asylum. The upper class was unable to take accept all his revolutionary thinking and acting, so the Raja was stabbed to death inside the palace.

If there was only one "Vellamkudi raja" in Kerala then, today's Kerala is full of "Vellamadi rajas" (drunkard kings). I was shocked to hear yesterday about the death of an acquaintance. He was not more than 3-4 years older than me. He died last month from liver cirrhosis caused by excessive drinking. This society has a very twisted relation with alcohol. There is no concept of enjoyable, limited consumption. People drink to become unconscious. Malayalees use the word 'fit' for the alcohol high. Unfortunately there is nothing fit about this habit here. 

Are you happy? 

Drink yourself to a stupor. 

Are you depressed? 

Drink yourself to stupor. 

Sigh! 

Alcohol is one of the greatest products of human civilization! Even the Indian epics and mythology treat it with great respect and praise its potency. Gods and sages are big fans of the bottle (may be pots in that era). It is a pity that it has been reduced to the status of a social evil and a source of addiction. Pizza Hut is going to serve wine and beer in its India outlets. Hopefully, the abundance and availability will, eventually, bring about a maturity in the Malayalee attitude towards alcohol. 

Life in USA had made me oblivious of the intricacies of the cooking gas system: the agencies, the delivery men, the reservations, the calculation of cylindrical life! Indian astronomy, number and calendar systems evolved over thousands of years for the ultimate purpose of the estimating the life time of a cooking gas cylinder. 'Out of gas' is right below 'murder of Brahmin' in the list of terrible things that can occur in a household. Imprecise calculation of a cylinder's life leads to breakfast-less family, hot water-less grandmother and tea-less newspaper reading. 

I have it on good authority that in homes where folks insist on having hot water baths, the life will be no more than 22 days. Minimalist cooks can stretch a cylinder over 70 days. Our whole neighborhood is involved in an empty cylinder exchange scheme of flipping each other's orders so that back up cylinders exist in all the homes. Anna Hazare is not aware of this gaseous corruption! 

Achan told me about a scrap metal resale shop outside the recently vacated apartment in Chennai. He said a naked three or four year old girl tags along every morning with her family lugging a metal detector and bags of their salvaged, scavenged scrap from the previous day. This is a means of livelihood! There exist the right to education, the right to information, the right to service and soon a Lokpal to guard against high level corruption. But naked children will continue search for abandoned coins in the hope for a meal a day. 

Let us hope these children grow up to become dirt cheap, hard working construction laborers who can build us bigger walls around our gated communities so that we don't have to see their filthy lives again!!